Cold Justice (Detective Ella Marconi #3)

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Cold Justice (Detective Ella Marconi #3)

by Katherine Howell (Goodreads Author)

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 78 ratings · 13 reviews

A teenage girl stumbles across the body of her classmate, Tim Pieters, hidden amongst the bushes. His family is devastated, the killer is never found.

Eighteen years later, political pressure sees the murder investigation reopened. Detective Ella Marconi tracks down Georgie Riley, the student who found the body, and who is now a paramedic. Georgie seems to be telling the tr...more

Paperback, 329 pages

Published February 2010 by Pan MacMillan Australia (first published 2010)

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Jan 07, 2012 Jill Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Book Review
By Jill Smith © November 2010
Title: Cold Justice
Author: Katherine Howell
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

This is a really great read. The action and interaction between the main character and her work mate has you guessing immediately, a real hook into the story.

Freya and Georgie had been friends at school and had lost touch with one another. This was a very unusual reunion. Both had secrets they were unwilling to share that dated back to their adolescence. Little did either of them know that...more

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Jan 29, 2010 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: australian, crime, review-books

It's nearly impossible for a reader to understand what it must be like to write a series of books, based around the same characters. All we can do is be extremely grateful that writers like Katherine Howell can do it, book after book, maintaining the same high standard, giving us new stories, and new situations for the characters to appear in, keeping the series fresh and interesting all the time.

Following on from FRANTIC and THE DARKEST HOUR, the third book COLD JUSTICE again simply does not mi...more It's nearly impossible for a reader to understand what it must be like to write a series of books, based around the same characters. All we can do is be extremely grateful that writers like Katherine Howell can do it, book after book, maintaining the same high standard, giving us new stories, and new situations for the characters to appear in, keeping the series fresh and interesting all the time.

Following on from FRANTIC and THE DARKEST HOUR, the third book COLD JUSTICE again simply does not miss a beat. Part of the reason that these books are so good is the shifting viewpoint. Not only does the author use her paramedic / ambulance officer background to great effect, writing characters from within that world, she combines them with a good, solid, interesting police cast, concentrating on a central character - Detective Ella Marconi. This switching perspective gives the stories some real depth, although, in COLD JUSTICE, the formula is twisted slightly again. Georgie Daniels is a paramedic with current day work problems, and a teenage connection back to the murder of a classmate. Nineteen years ago she discovered the body of Tim Pieters hidden amongst bushes. His family was devastated and Georgie's own friendship with Freya destroyed overnight. All these years later, having problems with an out of control boss, she's transferred to a new ambulance station and finds herself working with (and being assessed by) her old school friend Freya. At the same time the investigation into the death of Tim Pieters is reopened and Ella Marconi has nowhere else to start but with the person who discovered his body, his friends at school and his family members.

There's some really good balancing of all of the elements in this story - Marconi has a work life, and a personal life, and they coincide and collide realistically. Whilst everything in her life isn't perfect, it's also not so imperfect that it's unbelievable (although I'd kill any boyfriend who taught my mother how to send text messages like that!). Georgie and Freya have their own lives as well - Georgie and her husband, away from their beloved country home and animals, Freya with kids and a husband she loves no matter what sort of a twit he can make of herself. Both women have a demanding work life, and a not straight-forward private life and the complications of their teenage friendship, the murder of Tim and how they went their separate ways creates a prickliness between them which really works. On the victim's side the damage that was done to Tim's family as a result of his murder is carefully displayed - the pain and struggle of his mother Tamara in particular is graphic.

The final balancing act, however, is to give a good cast of characters a great plot to work within. Resolving a cold case from so long ago isn't an easy task for Marconi, but persistence, focus, good sixth sense, and a willingness to put reluctance aside and work with the less than ideal partner that is assigned to her, and eventually the truth is revealed.

COLD JUSTICE is a terrific book. It would work as a standalone, or it works as part of the continuing story of Ella Marconi. It works as a character study, or as a plot driven police procedural. Basically it just works. Really really really well.
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Feb 21, 2013 Melina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, 2013-aww, 2013-first-time-read, adult-fiction, australian, australian-women-writers, fiction, library-book, mystery, paper-book, crime, detective

It’s been a while since I’ve read a crime/detective novel, and I tend to be really hit and miss when I do read them. I’ve never read them with the intention of ‘catching’ the criminal, I prefer to be taken along for the ride wherever it might take me. Which is why Katherine Howell’s Cold Justice was such a great read – it was definitely an exciting ride to be taken on!

I knew nothing about this series when I first picked up the book, so for the first couple of chapters I really felt like I’d been...more It’s been a while since I’ve read a crime/detective novel, and I tend to be really hit and miss when I do read them. I’ve never read them with the intention of ‘catching’ the criminal, I prefer to be taken along for the ride wherever it might take me. Which is why Katherine Howell’s Cold Justice was such a great read – it was definitely an exciting ride to be taken on!

I knew nothing about this series when I first picked up the book, so for the first couple of chapters I really felt like I’d been thrown in the deep end. I’ve since learned that Katherine Howell focuses on the same detective each book, but a different pair of paramedics – so all readers would have been thrown in the deep end with one part of the story. Lucky, it doesn’t take very long for the pieces to start to fall into place, and it’s an excellent chance for my inference skills to get a work out.

Ella Marconi is a detective coming back to the job after being shot. She’s been put on to a Cold Case to work out what happened to a 17 year old boy, Tim Pieters, who was killed nineteen years earlier. The girl who found the body, Georgie, is now a paramedic on ‘review’ after suffering workplace abuse in her old position. She comes to the attention of Ella, as well as her partner Freya who just happened to be an old school friend. Then there’s Tim’s family, who are all dealing with the reopening of the case in different and sometimes very strange ways.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I loved the different characters, the way the plot unravels and the way things interact. I really enjoyed the paramedics story and the way it interacted with Ella’s story. It may have been a little convenient the way it all came together by the end of the book – but I suppose that it sometimes the way it works in the real world – and a case that wasn’t solved by the end of the book, wouldn’t be half as interesting.

There’s a lot of positive talk around about Katherine Howell’s latest book in the series, and I will have to track it down! I really want to read more of this series and spend some more time with this fascinating character and different approach to crime fiction.

This review originally appeared at Adventures of a Subversive Reader (less)

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May 21, 2012 Brenda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: aussie-authors

Detective Ella Marconi has been handed a cold case involving a gruesome murder nineteen years ago of school boy Tim Pieters. Tim’s cousin, Callum, is now a member of Parliament, and has decided to push the police to re-open the case to find the killer.

During the course of locating witnesses from 19 years ago, Ella tracks down Georgie who was just a teenager at the time, and also the one who discovered Tim’s body, hidden in bushes. She was at the same school as Tim, even though they were two yea...more

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May 09, 2013 John Bartlett rated it 5 of 5 stars

Katherine Howell's books are great for escapist reading. Her characters are believable. Her attention to detail is spot on; she creates a very evocative atmosphere.
The plot moves rapidly along and is impossible to second guess the final result.
What more would you want for a bit of escapism?
I've just finished reading 'Cold Justice' which is about the fourth I've read in the Ella Marconi series.

Howell's experience as a paramedic comes across in her detailed descriptions and Ella mrconi is an attr...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Diana Hockley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Now this Katherine Howell novel lived up to my expectations! The characters are believable and the plot twists were feasible and exciting.

I don't want to give a spoiler, so I will say that the ending was a surprise to me - and I am not easily caught out by the identity of the murderer, but I didn't guess who it was until almost the end.

The usual characters - Ella Marconi and Murray Shakespeare are there and the MP cousin is an engaging newcomer to the stable of regular characters in Howell's boo...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Deborah Biancotti rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: writer-women, aww2012, oz

Wow, Howell is a masterful storyteller. Her writing is sharp, her action is clear, and her clever interweaving of conversation and clues with active, energetic scenes makes this book almost cinematic.

I did have a hard time separating the multitude of characters - there are at least 6 point of view characters & every one of them comes with a full background of lovers/friends/family/enemies. Chapters are assigned arbitrarily across the characters (& the years) so that you never get more th...more Wow, Howell is a masterful storyteller. Her writing is sharp, her action is clear, and her clever interweaving of conversation and clues with active, energetic scenes makes this book almost cinematic.

I did have a hard time separating the multitude of characters - there are at least 6 point of view characters & every one of them comes with a full background of lovers/friends/family/enemies. Chapters are assigned arbitrarily across the characters (& the years) so that you never get more than a few pages of any one character. Which is good if you're not particularly interested in that character. But is also bad, because - strictly imho - multiple points of view (POVs) can make for a choppy reading experience & serve to slow down the action, often spinning us into another internal monologue or a personal circumstance or a small repetition when we really just want to know what the hell was happening with this cold case under investigation. (There are 2 too many paramedic call-outs for me, for instance.)

I admit I cared less about some characters than others. Georgie, for instance, with her penchant for ringing 'home' to hear her menagerie of animals ('gods,' I remember thinking, 'i hope the animals don't end up with bloody point of view sections'). And Freya - despite absorbing most of my interest during the book - did have a rather repetitive habit of announcing "nobody knows anything, howcouldthey!" to some shady character who ends up, somewhat tenuously, with a position in her life again. And I admit many of the male characters (Matt/Wayne/James) merged into one.

Some of the journeys were tough to witness, & Howell charts them with compassion & a humane insight. Freya is one particularly good example of this, & I wished I could have had one final section from her point of view to see how she was *feeling* by the time the book's events had unfolded around her. Others, like Georgie, struck me as having a lot less to do or achieve - though apparently this book is one in a series, & so perhaps I'd be more interested if I'd read about Georgie & her animals in an earlier book. Detective Ella Marconi does stirling work at somewhat of a personal cost & I would love to read more of her.

But best of all: the ending, rather than feeling kind of tacked onto the end as it often can in some thrillers, was convincing and satisfying. The prose was efficient & never self-conscious & the Sydney detail was free of sentimentality. Katharine Howell is one of our great thriller writers.(less)

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Apr 01, 2012 Sheree rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: suspense-thriller, read-in-2010, reviews, aussie-author

Katherine Howell has done it again and brilliantly. Cold Justice is a compelling, multi-layered read that combines "all that is good" from this author. Howell's attention to detail is once again, meticulous. The sights, smells, sounds and emotions of the paramedic scene are visceral, the next best thing to actually being there. When an author writes what she knows and a reader feels like a participant rather than an observer, I think it's safe to say the author has done her job superbly!

I don't...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Michele Davis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Loved this book. Even though I soon knew who the murderer was from a reference in a later book ( bugger!) my fault as I started with Katherine's most recent book and are reading them as I find them. Once again was struck by how real and vulnerable her characters are. Fast paced, a great read .

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Mar 30, 2013 Ann rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 18, 2013 Graham Crawford rated it 3 of 5 stars

A good holiday novel. Alas I read one of the later books in the series first - and knew who the murderer was. The fact I still enjoyed this book is proof of Howells skill with drawing characters.

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Apr 25, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: aussie-crime-fiction

I haven't read one of Katherine Howell's paramedic/police procedural novels for a while and I had forgotten what I was missing. These books are a really enjoyable read and this is probably the best of the bunch - and had me guessing most of the way. Ella Marconi is at the top of her game - now if only she could sort out her personal life!

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Jul 11, 2010 Tammie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Awesome once again. Only four stars this time as there were a couple of frustrating bits I wanted to shout to the detective to pay attention to but all up another great Katherine Howell book with slightly more medical detail to make it even more interesting. Can't wait for a fourth book to be written.

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Karen Is this a series Tammie?
01 lug. 17:22

Tammie Oh yes it sure is!

Great writing, but also right up my alley as they're written by an ex-paramedic so they've got a little bit of ambulance reference t...more
01 lug. 17:29

Karen Oh, the humble geeky librarian is a rare breed seen only in desert parts of Western Australia and never after dark. hahahaha! The coastal sickly ambo...more
01 lug. 18:26

May 22, 2013 Wendy rated it 4 of 5 stars

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May 12, 2013 Lissa Duncan marked it as to-read · review of another edition

May 05, 2013 Kay marked it as to-read

Shelves: lockyer, my-ebooks

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Apr 16, 2013 Marie-Louise rated it 3 of 5 stars

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Shelves: present-day-australia-mystery

Mar 30, 2013 Denni marked it as to-read

Mar 30, 2013 Jeannette rated it 4 of 5 stars

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Mar 24, 2013 Bookworm9992001 rated it 3 of 5 stars

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Mar 17, 2013 Rachael Beauchamp rated it 4 of 5 stars

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About Katherine Howell

Katherine Howell worked as a paramedic for fifteen years while completing her Bachelor and Masters degrees in creative writing. Her first novel, Frantic, was published in 2007 by Pan Macmillan and set a paramedic alongside Sydney police detective Ella Marconi in 'an adrenaline rush of a thriller' (Sydney Morning Herald). It won the 2008 Davitt award for best crime fiction. Her second book, The Dar...more

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Cold Justice (Detective Ella Marconi #3)

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